Birth Control and Contraception

Birth control pills have been an essential tenet of reproductive healthcare since their popularization in the 1960s. The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the landmark case Griswold v. Connecticut, which outlawed bans on contraception for married couples, contributed to the pill’s growing popularity in the second half of the 1960s. Today millions of women in the U.S. use birth control pills for a variety of reasons, including preventing pregnancy, managing menstrual symptoms and treating medical conditions like PCOS and endometriosis.

All contraceptive methods can be used to prevent pregnancy, but only some reduce the risk of STI transmission. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 65 percent of U.S. women aged 15-49 were using at least one form of contraception. Common contraceptive methods include condoms, IUDs, cervical caps, and permanent forms such as vasectomies and tubal ligation.

Access to contraceptives and birth control is under attack by Project 2025 and extremist groups trying to ban practices that promote sexual health and well-being. Many anti-contraceptive extremists seek to spread misinformation and employ scare tactics to intimidate those trying to access this essential form of healthcare. Reliable information about birth control pills and other forms of contraception can be found online via Planned Parenthood, Bedsider or Guttmacher. For medical advice, talk to your doctor about deciding the best contraceptive method for you.

Resistance, From the Red Carpet to the Courts: Grammy Winners Denounce ICE, Immigrant Families Challenge Trump’s Visa Ban

PUBLISHED 2/5/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—For the first time, more Americans support than oppose abolishing ICE.
—Senate Democrats refused to pass a DHS bill that would fund ICE for this fiscal year. Instead they passed a two-week continuing resolution to give them time to negotiate reforms designed to prevent further brutality from ICE and CBP agents. 
—Artists use Grammy acceptance speeches to denounce Trump and ICE: “Our voices matter,” urged Billie Eilish. “We are humans and we are Americans,” said Bad Bunny.
—Organizations raise alarms about Grok AI spreading nonconsensual intimate images on Twitter.
—Virtual reality may be a tool to change opinions about catcalling.
—Access to IVF has led to more unmarried women in their 40s choosing to have babies.

… and more.

How Attacks on Immigrant Teens Helped Build the Post-Roe Playbook

PUBLISHED 2/5/2026 by

A conversation between legal scholar Shoshanna Ehrlich and Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

“In the first Trump administration, we still had Roe. By losing that underlying constitutional right to abortion at the federal level, the door has been opened for the second Trump administration to both compound the attacks and move in new directions,” Amiri told Ms.

“We were screaming from the rooftops that they were coming after Roe, and abortion was going to be banned, and we were not believed. … As with all rights, they’re tenuous and you have to continue to fight to enforce them.

“It’s always the most marginalized, as we’ve been talking about. It’s the people who have the fewest resources, people who live in rural areas, young people, people without documentation, people with limited language skills. That is who will feel the brunt the hardest of these policies.”

How Junk Science Is Driving Reproductive Health Policy: A Live Conversation With Guttmacher Institute, Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute and Ms. (Online; Tuesday, Feb. 17)

PUBLISHED 1/25/2026 by

As false claims and junk science increasingly distort public understanding of reproductive health, leading experts are coming together to confront the growing threat mis- and disinformation pose to access, policy and democracy itself.

On Feb. 17, the Guttmacher Institute, Ms. magazine and Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law will co-host a virtual webinar examining how misinformation is reshaping debates around contraception, abortion and sexual and reproductive health and rights in the United States.

Who Controls Mifepristone? The Politics Blocking a New Era of Contraception

PUBLISHED 1/22/2026 by

Mifepristone “works against endometriosis. It works against myoma [fibroids]. We are now involved in a study group that looks at whether it can prevent breast cancer,” says pioneering reproductive-health advocate Dr. Rebecca Gomperts. “It has so many potential uses, and it hasn’t been [developed].

“If we as women don’t make sure that it becomes available to meet our needs … then it won’t happen.”

This is the final installment of a new series, “The Moral Property of Women: How Antiabortion Politics Are Withholding Medical Care,” a serialized version of the Winter 2026 print feature article.

Keeping Score: Renee Good Fatally Shot by ICE; Women Work Longer and Are Paid Less Worldwide; N.Y. Fights Back Against Federal Childcare Freeze

PUBLISHED 1/15/2026 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—”We had whistles. They had guns,” said Becca Good, wife of Renee Good, who was killed in Minneapolis by ICE agent Jonathan Ross.
—In central Texas, five months after the Sandy Creek flooding, “many are still homeless, and only 36 percent of FEMA claims in our area have been approved,” said survivor Brandy Gerstner. “FEMA must be independent, fully funded and strengthened—because when it fails to function, real families pay the price.”
—Anti-Muslim and anti-South Asian hate increased around the election of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
—The Department of Veterans Affairs announced new abortion bans.
—Meta has removed the social media accounts of dozens of reproductive health and LGBTQ groups.
—Women worldwide earn just a third of what men do when unpaid domestic labor is taken into account.

… and more.

Seven Ways the Trump Administration Has Made Pregnancy More Dangerous

PUBLISHED 1/8/2026 by

Trump has been in office for less than a year. The Supreme Court killed Roe v. Wade less than three years ago. And today, if you are a woman in the United States, your rights change when you cross state lines—men’s rights do not. 

It’s easy to lose sight of just how debilitating this administration has been for reproductive rights, because they are doing so much else so loudly. (Apologies to Greenland.) But this administration has quietly attacked abortion rights from just about every angle. A new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights makes clear just how aggressive they’ve been. 

Here are seven quiet moves from the Trump administration that are costing women and girls their lives.

Ms. Global: Iraq’s Child Marriage Surge, Hurricane Devastation in Jamaica, Historic EU Abortion Vote and More

PUBLISHED 1/7/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 19th most dangerous country for women, 11th in maternal mortality, 30th in closing the gender pay gap, 75th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to health care. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’s most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: News from Iraq, Jamaica, the EU, Cambodia and Thailand, and more.

What 200 Gen Z Women Told Me About Birth Control Should Alarm Every Woman in America

PUBLISHED 12/17/2025 by

Birth control is the single most powerful tool for women’s economic mobility and autonomy in modern history. It changed everything: When women could plan if, when and with whom they wanted to have children, college enrollment soared, dropout rates fell and poverty rates declined. The ability to access contraception has been directly tied to women’s ability to stay in school, build careers and make decisions about their own futures.

So why, in 2025, are we finding ourselves in a messaging war on birth control?

Arrests in Memphis as Antiabortion Training Camp Sparks New Era of Clinic Blockades

PUBLISHED 11/26/2025 by and | UPDATED 12/9/2025 at 9:29 A.M. PT

Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, is trying to make a comeback by teaming up with antiabortion extremist group PAAU (the so-called “Progressive” Anti-Abortion Uprising group associated with dozens of clinic and pharmacy invasions), to kick off “Rescue Resurrection.” Their stated goal is to revive large-scale clinic blockades with a formal kick-off training and series of events starting Dec. 3 in Memphis, Tenn.

On Friday morning, Dec. 5, approximately 25 individuals participating in the Rescue Resurrection training blockaded the Planned Parenthood health center in Memphis, even though abortion is already banned in Tennessee. Fourteen individuals were arrested.

Terry was one of the leaders of mass clinic blockades that took antiabortion extremism to a new level in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Operation Rescue’s (OR’s) orchestrated blockades in Atlanta, Memphis and Wichita drew massive media coverage. During the sieges, accessing a targeted abortion clinic meant getting through a gauntlet of bodies blocking clinic doors and driveways. Antiabortion activists traveled state to state in order to participate, blockading clinics, going limp when arrested (to represent the “unborn”) and requiring three to four police officers to remove each protester arrested and carry them to waiting police buses.

Keeping Score: Democrats Dominate Key Elections; Federal Government Reopens After 43 Days; ICE Targets Childcare Centers

PUBLISHED 11/13/2025 by

In every issue of Ms., we track research on our progress in the fight for equality, catalogue can’t-miss quotes from feminist voices and keep tabs on the feminist movement’s many milestones. We’re Keeping Score online, too—in this biweekly roundup.

This week:
—Democratic candidates won elections across the country.
—At Crooked Con last week, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) laid out her priorities for when Democrats regain power in Congress: “We’ve got to fix the Voting Rights Act, we have to deal with the money in politics, we have to deal with the Supreme Court and we need immigration reform.”
—ICE targeted childcare workers and is accused of inhumane detention conditions.
—Nancy Pelosi announced her retirement in 2027.
—Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall, a year out from the 2026 midterms.
—Many popular lubricants aren’t safe for vaginal health.

… and more.